Two or three times a week, via email or forum posts or comments, a religious person asks, “what do atheists have against religion?” or “why do atheists waste time speaking out against religion?” Four articles on the same day are all arguing against religion, because it appears that religion leads to insanity is some fraction of its members. That insanity affects everyone in remarkably negative ways.

The article opens with a litany of bizarre beliefs held by a sizable fraction of college-bound Muslims in Britain:

A startlingly large proportion of young British Muslims hold what to most of us are outrageous and unacceptable views â€“ views that they consider to be Muslim truths.

Four out of 10 Muslim students in Britain support the introduction of sharia into UK law for Muslims, according to a YouGov poll. Almost a third of them said that killing in the name of religion was justified; 40% said they felt it was unacceptable for Muslim men and women to associate freely; and nearly a quarter do not think that men and women are equal in the eyes of Allah.

A quarter of Muslim students said they had little or no respect for homosexuals. As for whether British Muslim servicemen should be allowed to opt out of hostilities with Muslim countries, 57% said they should and a further 25% said they were not sure.

More than half of the Muslim students were in favour of an Islamic political party to support their views in parliament. A third donâ€™t think or donâ€™t know whether Islam is compatible with the western notion of democracy, and a third said they were in favour of a worldwide Islamic caliphate based on sharia.

Note that these are the opinions of people attending “the best universities and higher education colleges”. Almost a third of them said that “killing in the name of religion was justified.” That alone should give everyone pause. If there were a gang where one third of the members advocated murder, what would we do? Why do we treat relision any differently?

The asymmetry is stark. Secularists say, “believe whatever nonsense you want, but keep it to yourself and act responsibly”. The [religious] say, “believe what we want you to believe and act as we say”. The psychopaths among them say, “believe what we want you to believe and act as we say or we will kill you”.

â€œYou Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas. Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death.â€

Is that the justification for the suicide attacks?

â€œMore than that. An entire society sanctifies death and the suicide terrorists. In Palestinian culture a suicide terrorist becomes a hero, a martyr. Sheikhs tell their students about the â€˜heroism of the shaheeds.â€™â€œ

This is why atheists spend time and energy speaking out against religion. Religion hurts everyone. It seems like it is time to admit the obvious – that believing in and speaking to imaginary beings is a form of mental illness, and this illness can lead to extreme behaviors that damage society as a whole. These articles offer plenty of evidence demonstrating the problem.

1) “Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-christian from the United States of America, Whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would it be James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?”

2) “Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK, and that eaing shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith. Or should we just stick with the Sermon on the Mount, a passage that is so radical that it is doubtful that our own defense department would survive its application.”

How could anyone ask these questions without knowing that religion is a complete charade?

Christian terrorism is religious terrorism by groups or individuals who identify (or are labeled) as followers of Christianity. The motivation of the Christian terrorist is typically rooted in an idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible and other Christian tenets of faith. From the viewpoint of the terrorist, Christian scripture and theology provide justification for violent political activities.

Goswami is convinced, along with a number of others who subscribe to the same view, that the universe, in order to exist, requires a conscious sentient being to be aware of it. Without an observer, he claims, it only exists as a possibility. And as they say in the world of science, Goswami has done his math. Marshalling evidence from recent research in cognitive psychology, biology, parapsychology and quantum physics, and leaning heavily on the ancient mystical traditions of the world, Goswami is building a case for a new paradigm that he calls “monistic idealism,” the view that consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of everything that is.

Does this mean that God is punishing Christians? No. It means that bad things happen to Christians at exactly the same statistical rates as everyone else. Despite all the prayers, despite the “good living”, despite “God’s oversight and protection”, bad things happen to Christians just like everyone else.

The church shooting this week is getting a lot of media attention. Why? Because any mass shooting at a school, college, mall, etc. is news. We would expect mass shootings in churches too. In fact, shootings happen all the time in churches:

This is exactly what we would expect in a world where “God” is imaginary.

And yet people still believe that God is reaching down and personally protecting them. For example:

– The Hand of God – “Mustering his last bit of strength and a prayer he gave it one last try. This time it was if a hand was lifting him up and out of the water and somehow he found himself on the shore actually away from the edge of the open water… Today Jim has made a miraculous recovery. He hasnâ€™t gone on any walks by the river and misses his good friend, Jack. When people ask him how he ever survived he has just one answer, â€œThe Hand of God saved me. There is no other explanation.â€

– No tornado, but it sure felt like one – “”God was walking with a lot of people,” said Carol Wolfe of Somerset, who rushed to Junction City yesterday morning to check on her daughter and grandson. Blythe agrees that it was divine help that got her up out of bed and into the kitchen just before the tree trunk crashed onto the bed where she had lain seconds before.”

– ‘I think she was the angel’ – “Another friend, Kristin McGovern, added: “She was dead, but the baby was still alive. I think she was the angel.””

Although 53 per cent said that killing in the name of religion was never justified, compared with 94 per cent of non-Muslims, 32 per cent said that it was. Of these, 4 per cent said killing could be justified to “promote or preserve” religion, while 28 per cent said it was acceptable if that religion were under attack.

This is no different from the widely held Christian belief that people of the homosexual persuasion should be killed, as described in the Bible. Christian extremists wish to kill them all. More moderate Christians favor laws that deny basic human rights to people of the homosexual persuasion. This article is typical:

It talks about estimates by the Southern Baptist Church of Alabama that calculate the number of people in the state that will go to hell. Southern Baptists, of course, are on the highway to heaven. But what about everyone else? Who has God damned to eternal torture in the unquenchable lake of fire? According to the article:
– Many of the people in other Baptist and evangelical denominations
– Catholics
– Jews
– Muslims
– Hindus
– Confucians
– Atheists
– All who refuse to accept Jesus

Billions of people, in other words.

Hell is, of course, a completely imaginary place. But for members of the Southern Baptist religion, it is real. So it makes you wonder… how can these members stand to be around all of us who will be tortured for eternity?

More importantly, why would they worship anyone whose top item on the resume is “mass torturer”?

He was made more famous by his performance in a recent hitting contest, and then a comment by a sports announcer where the announcer said, “It’s a lousy day to be an atheist.” Here Newsweek takes a look at the comment:

Had Reilly said it was a lousy day to be a Jew or a lousy day to be a Muslim, I donâ€™t doubt we would still be hearing about it and Iâ€™m certain the announcer would have faced some sanction from the network. In the end, I think Reilly could have come up with a better way to explain what he was seeing.

Let’s start by acknowledging that it is good to see a fellow human being overcome an addiction. To then achieve greatness is a nice bonus. If it takes the belief in an imaginary being to get there, so be it.

But let’s also acknowledge that the belief in this imaginary being, both by Hamilton and billions of Christians, is a dangerous delusion. It is dangerous because, in order to believe it, you have to turn off your intelligence. Whenever humans stop thinking rationally, it is a bad thing.

Here is the point of disconnection:

And still Katie told me, “You’re going to be back playing baseball, because there’s a bigger plan for you.” I couldn’t even look her in the eye. I said something like, “Yeah, yeah, quit talking to me.”

She looks pretty smart, doesn’t she? I have a mission now. My mission is to be the ray of hope, the guy who stands out there on that beautiful field and owns up to his mistakes and lets people know it’s never completely hopeless, no matter how bad it seems at the time. I have a platform and a message, and now I go to bed at night, sober and happy, praying I can be a good messenger.

Katie is his wife, who apparently stuck by her man through the depths of addiction. She deserves credit for that. But here is what she is saying: “An all-powerful being has a plan. My husband’s pain, and subsequent recovery, is a part of that plan.” The only way to believe that is to totally disconnect yourself from the real world. Anyone who wants to believe in an all-powerful being who forces someone into drug addiction like a puppet in order to fulfill a “plan” is delusional. Who would believe in such a demon?

And what about the millions of addicts whose lives are ruined? They end up penniless, in jail, or dead because they never break free of their addictions. They are so damaged by addiction that they never recover. If Hamilton’s puppet plunge into the depths of addiction is part of a plan, then all the other hopeless addicts are part of the plan too. And a plan like that sucks. The reality is easy to see: the only reason that Hamilton’s story is interesting is because it is rare. And the only reason it could be rare is because million of others suffer and die to make it rare.

For Hamilton to celebrate a “victory” over addiction, when that “victory” could only be had through the intense suffering and death of millions of other addicts, is, quite honestly, disgusting. “God” had to plan for millions of failures when he planned for Hamilton’s success, because that is the only way for the success to be noteworthy. Who wants to believe in that being?

Christians would counter with, “drug addicts become drug addicts through free will – God never planned that. Addicts make bad choices.” That of course negates the plan that is key to Hamilton’s message. And that is not what Hamilton and his wife said. They say that God planned for their misery so the redemption would be sweeter, and the public platform given to Josh would allow him to glorify God. To emphasize the point, Hamilton makes this declaration:

But the way I look at it, I couldn’t fail. I’ve been given this platform to talk about the hell I’ve been through, so it’s almost like I need to do well, like I don’t have a choice.

And:

How am I here? I can only shrug and say, “It’s a God thing.” It’s the only possible explanation.

Also:

It was the same dream, with an important difference. I would hit [the devil] and he would bounce back up, the ugliest and most hideous creature you could imagine. This devil seemed unbeatable; I couldn’t knock him out. But just when I felt like giving up, I felt a presence by my side. I turned my head and saw Jesus, battling alongside me. We kept fighting, and I was filled with strength. The devil didn’t stand a chance.

You can doubt me, but I swear to you I dreamed it. When I woke up, I felt at peace. I wasn’t scared. To me, the lesson was obvious: Alone, I couldn’t win this battle. With Jesus, I couldn’t lose.

Translation: “God” put Hamilton through hell, then saved him through personal intervention by Jesus. “God” did that so Hamilton could speak about it from the platform. That sounds reassuring until you consider the millions of people who God must plan to completely destroy.

A person who is thinking clearly knows that you can’t have it both ways. If God had anything to do with Hamilton’s success, it means that God is also central to every failure. God planned it all. If “God” helped Hamilton recover, then… well, let’s look at starving children… The 10,000 kids who will die of starvation today all over the world must die because of God’s plan. And that is utterly disgusting to think about.

We of course do not hear the stories of the dead children and the dead addicts, because they are dead. They would certainly curse “God” after hearing Hamilton’s story. After all, if God were to exist, and if God has a plan, then God must be their murderer.